VANCOUVER, B.C.—Vancouver City Council recently approved a policy that requires all new building rezonings to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standard, the highest green building standard for rezonings in North America. The change takes effect January 31, 2011, and is expected to result in 20 to 30 new green buildings being constructed annually, creating new green job opportunities in the city.
“Setting a new standard like LEED Gold for new building rezonings is a significant step for Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “This is another example of the innovative leadership our city’s development and tech sectors are taking to accelerate our job growth and take advantage of global economic opportunities.
“This policy took a lot of work to develop and demonstrates a new collaboration between the City of Vancouver and industry groups such as the Urban Development Institute and Canada Green Building Council,” Robertson added. “We have extensive green building expertise and talent in our city—it’s one of the fastest growing sectors in Vancouver—and we want to help it expand.
“By bringing in a LEED Gold standard, we’ll reduce our GHGs (greenhouse gases), create new job opportunities for our local green building sector, and continue to take a leadership role on urban planning in North America,” he concluded.
LEED Administered by Canada Green Building Council
LEED is a third-party certification program and an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. In Canada, the LEED program is administered by the Canada Green Building Council.
“This decision shows strong commitment by the City of Vancouver to increase the performance and reduce the environmental impacts from new buildings and homes,” said Thomas Mueller, the president and CEO of the Canada Green Building Council. “This policy supports our mission of transforming buildings and communities to meet the highest environmental standards.”
Buildings in Vancouver account for 54 percent of all GHGs on an annual basis. Currently, the City requires all rezonings to meet LEED Silver or Built Green Gold standards.
“We applaud the City of Vancouver’s initiative to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world,” said Maureen Enser, executive director of the Urban Development Institute, which represents over 500 companies in the development industry and related professions.
“The Green Rezoning Policy is an important step toward that goal,” she added. “We thank Council for the work the City has done to identify solutions to areas of concern for the industry. We believe the policy passed today strikes the right balance.”
The policy supports the Greenest City Action Team and Greenest City 2020 goals of leading the world in green building design and construction, as well as creating 20,000 green jobs in Vancouver by 2020.
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